I knew two of them, Rothfuss (Name of the Wind) and Brett (Warded Man), the former garnering a good bit of attention for his couple of main books. The rest of them.... well, not like I'm all that worldly.

I live in Detroit (ok, metro Detroit), why am I just now learning about this convention...

the news media does a horrible job at telling about events. my favorite kansas city story was lamenting about the end of a festival due to attendance. before that they never featured the existence of the festival that I ever saw. I wonder if the two were connected?

they days you need to frequent the website or be on the email list or know someone that cares about events you may want to know about

I knew two of them, Rothfuss (Name of the Wind) and Brett (Warded Man), the former garnering a good bit of attention for his couple of main books. The rest of them.... well, not like I'm all that worldly.

Rothfuss' books are now some of my all time favorites. He has only been writing for the last few years but already is listed as #18 of all time best si-fi/fantasy novels. Can't wait for the third book.

I live in Detroit (ok, metro Detroit), why am I just now learning about this convention...

the news media does a horrible job at telling about events. my favorite kansas city story was lamenting about the end of a festival due to attendance. before that they never featured the existence of the festival that I ever saw. I wonder if the two were connected?

they days you need to frequent the website or be on the email list or know someone that cares about events you may want to know about

It's a good thing that your news media doesn't parrot PR releases. If the festival wanted to be featured in the media perhaps they could've purchased advertising.

I live in Detroit (ok, metro Detroit), why am I just now learning about this convention...

the news media does a horrible job at telling about events. my favorite kansas city story was lamenting about the end of a festival due to attendance. before that they never featured the existence of the festival that I ever saw. I wonder if the two were connected?

they days you need to frequent the website or be on the email list or know someone that cares about events you may want to know about

It's a good thing that your news media doesn't parrot PR releases. If the festival wanted to be featured in the media perhaps they could've purchased advertising.

Yes, because selling advertising is exactly the kind of local public good that the news media should be providing with their government-enforced monopolies.

If they were really trying to drum-up some nerdling dollars, they should have made it a D&D session with at least a couple of really hot girls involved. (Felicia Day would have been a real money-maker!)

If they were really trying to drum-up some nerdling dollars, they should have made it a D&D session with at least a couple of really hot girls involved. (Felicia Day would have been a real money-maker!)

Rothfuss' books are now some of my all time favorites. He has only been writing for the last few years but already is listed as #18 of all time best si-fi/fantasy novels.

A slight correction: he's only been published for the last few years. He's been writing, and rewriting, and teaching college classes on writing, and writing some more, for about two decades. Probably the only way you can burst onto the scene so spectacularly as he did, with such an jaw-droppingly heartbreakingly brilliant book as The Name of The Wind, is to have obsessively worked on your giant epic fantasy for years and years and years. And that's precisely what he did.

The man is clearly nuts, on several different levels. But it's the *good* kind of nuts. :-) For those of you who aren't familiar with his Worldbuilders charity, well, it's not yet as big as Child's Play from the Penny Arcade guys, but I think they may be on a similar growth trajectory. Never let it be said that Rothfuss wasn't as obsessively dedicated to raising money to fight poverty and hunger as he is obsessively dedicated to crafting extraordinary epic metafictional gorgeous jigsaw puzzles...

I know all of those authors, about half of them personally, but I work in the field. This is actually a very good group of A-list science fiction/fantasy authors from the past 5 years. If you don't recognize many of their names, that means you don't read a lot of recent SF/fantasy books.

The game is taking place at a science fiction/fantasy convention, so most people who attend it will know them.

At least one of them is dead, so Rods of Resurrection will be a pre-req.

I would replace Piers Anthony with Terry Pratchett in a heartbeat; since you'd have to rollback to when everyone was alive anyway, you could also rollback to when Pratchett wasn't suffering from Alzheimer's. The Discworld series in several orders of magnitude more imaginative and amusing than the Xanth series, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone (above the age of 18) who's willing to disagree after reading at least one book in both series. That's the only replacement I feel comfortable making without imposing my own book preferences on your fantasy.

If they were really trying to drum-up some nerdling dollars, they should have made it a D&D session with at least a couple of really hot girls involved. (Felicia Day would have been a real money-maker!)

If they were really trying to drum-up some nerdling dollars, they should have made it a D&D session with at least a couple of really hot girls involved. (Felicia Day would have been a real money-maker!)

correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you say hot girls?

He meant hot GEEKY girls, at which time Felicia Day is definitely near the top of that list simply because she's so well-known. If the pool was expanded to any hot geeky female regardless of popularity, there's at least a couple SC2/LoL team managers that would be in the top 10, along with Maxim's gamer girl and a few members of the competitive girl gamer teams.

Actually, for all of Detroit's ills, it does play host to several popular fantasy or sci-fi conventions on an annual or biannual basis. It's one of the things that really surprised me when I looked into it.

I would replace Piers Anthony with Terry Pratchett in a heartbeat; since you'd have to rollback to when everyone was alive anyway, you could also rollback to when Pratchett wasn't suffering from Alzheimer's. The Discworld series in several orders of magnitude more imaginative and amusing than the Xanth series, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone (above the age of 18) who's willing to disagree after reading at least one book in both series. That's the only replacement I feel comfortable making without imposing my own book preferences on your fantasy.

Although he settled down to be a hack in his later years, Anthony was once a Bright Young Star of science fiction's new wave. His first novel was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula. Pratchett does very clever humour and I am a fan of his, but his best writing isn't up to Anthony's best back in the day. (Though I think his children's books are quite brilliant)

So because people haven't read a fantacy book in the past few years and so dont know any of the authors that means they arent A list?? Let me tell you, they are! Take this as an opportunity to find out more and read a little modern fantacy.